Pentagon Capitalism

excerpted from article by Vijay Prashad

Z magazine - March, 1997

In 1970, Seymour Melman published Pentagon Capitalism: The
Political Economy of War (New York: McGraw Hill) which detailed
the tight nexus between the military elites and industrial capital.
Melman showed how military control over national resources narrowed
the choices available for other state programs. Further, he argued
that the military-industrial complex uses arms exports as a means
to manage domestic economic problems as well as to push an imperialist
policy via proxy. Aggressive arms sales to the Third World began
after the onset of the long recession in 1973. Arms sales to the
Gulf States, for instance, enabled the recovery of revenue spent
on oil. The major arms merchants sold intermediary military technology
to the Third World (keeping the latest inventions for the awesome
military might of the overdeveloped world). The military industrial
complex earned major revenues from the exchange which enabled
the defense industry to subsidize its domestic production as well
as to keep the companies productive during times of lean domestic
demand.

Further, arms production enabled states with flagging economies
to keep employment steady. The overdeveloped world benefited from
these sales even at a time when its own economies suffered from
the burden of stagflation. The nuclear elites developed a theory
to justify their sale of "conventional arms" to the
Third World: "conventional weapons, " the nuclearcrats
argued, provided a "means to circumvent" the use of
the nuclear option by non-nuclear and threshold states (India,
Pakistan, Israel, South Africa). If these states receive adequate
amounts of "conventional weapons," this wisdom contends,
then they will not engage in nuclear weapons production. In other
words, let these folks kill themselves with weapons which only
have local range; let them have neither long-range nuclear devices
nor access to "conventional weapons."

The latter option, total disarmament and non-proliferation
of "conventional weapons," is not an option because
the arms industry is structured into the heart of the economy
of the overdeveloped world. The Third World buys vast quantities
of arms from the overdeveloped world: India, for in stance, imported
$17 billion of military goods between 1985 and 1989; Iraq was
next on the list with $12 billion (and it was in the midst of
a bloody engagement with Iran at this time). From 1992 to 1994,
India increased its arms expenditure by 12 percent and Pakistan
by 19.5 percent. The major exporters of arms to India include
France, Sweden, UK, U.S., and Russia; Pakistan is outfitted by
PRC, France, Sweden, UK, and U.S. The role of the nuclear elite
in such transactions is apparent.

From 1983 to 1993, the U.S. increased its share of the [arms
sales to the Third World] pie to 55 percent and Russia decreased
its share to 10 percent. Within the past four years, the U.S.
renamed its Office of Munitions Control to the Center of Defense
Trade. With the end of Cold War II (1979- 1989), the arms business
has become "trade" rather than a matter of "control."

The U. S. occasionally frames laws to restrict arms sales
to states which engage in nuclear production. Two such legal provisions
are the Symington Amendment, section 669 of the Foreign Assistance
Act (which prevents U. S. sales to states who do not meet International
Atomic Energy Agency safeguards) and the Pressler Amendment (which
suspends U.S. military aid and US AID assistance to states engaged
in nuclear weapons development and proliferation-in this instance,
Pakistan). These legal remedies are frequently exempted to funnel
weapons to allies or to those states which pay top dollar. The
international community forged two protocols to control the proliferation
of "conventional weapons," but even these provisions
are nowhere near comprehensive. The UN Convention on Certain Conventional
Weapons (October 10, 1980) is only for weapons "which may
be deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate
effects" while the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls
for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies (November
1996) is only to prevent proliferation to states "whose behavior
is, or becomes, a cause for serious international concern."
Other states are offered free use of weaponry.

Of course, there is a contradiction in the policy of the nuclear
elites. On the one hand, these states, as the congealed representatives
of their industrial, commercial, and financial blocs, want to
promote a subdued passivity in the Third World in order for "commercial
freedom." On the other hand, the nuclear elites want to create
discord in the Third World in order to prevent a unified front
to the ambitions and interests of the overdeveloped world. There
is widespread resentment amongst the peoples of the Third World
at the policies of the nuclear elites. States might vote with
the nuclear elites at the UN, but their own populations display
an impatience which comes out in mass protests or in the growth
of unsavory populist movements.

India votes against a hollow treaty and the nuclear elites
and their clients round up the usual suspects to begin a campaign
of condemnation. The people of the overdeveloped world, soaked
with propaganda from the media (which in foreign affairs, acts
as the mouthpiece of the state department, et. al.), put their
faith in the doublespeak of the nuclearcrats. The nuclear elites,
meanwhile, balance their budgets on the blood of innocents via
the sale of "conventional weapons." There is no pretense
of morality in this phase of Pentagon capitalism.

Vijay Prashad is assistant professor of international studies
at Trinity College.